


Handholding

by Crollalanza



Series: Chikara/Keiji series [3]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-29
Updated: 2015-03-29
Packaged: 2018-03-20 05:30:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3638559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crollalanza/pseuds/Crollalanza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You’ve gone ... um ... white,” muttered the boy sitting opposite. “Oh, hell, I have got this so ...wrong, haven’t I? But I thought... I ... um ... I’ve really misread things. Shit!”</p><p>Chikara tried to answer but his mouth was dry. He tried to smile, but his face had frozen. He tried to make sense of what was actually happening in that room, at that time, (with this boy) but his thoughts had gone into freefall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Handholding

**Author's Note:**

> This is the third part in my Chikara/Keiji series which started with Chiaroscuro and continues with Riptide. It takes place immediately after Riptide finished. You might want to read them first, but I hope this makes sense as a standalone fic.
> 
> This pairing has been inspired by the fabulous art work of Alexa (electricprince) who is incredibly talented. 
> 
> Thank you Aleksa for nagging me for more. :D
> 
> This has also been written for the tumblr hq rarepair week free prompt. Thank you, guys, for running this.

The last time he’d held hands with anyone, he must have been ... what? ... Fourteen? Fifteen? And walking along the street with a girl who’d decided she liked him. Unless he counted walking down the street with his Grandma who thought he was still a baby and needed help crossing the road, then Chikara couldn’t recall holding someone’s hand for over two years. Yeah, he’d shaken hands with players on opposing teams. And he’d fist bumped the guys when coming on as a sub, or now as Captain, high fiving them when they played well.

But actually holding hands, entwining fingers, feeling palm against palm (and hating the fact that his was suddenly so clammy) was unfamiliar for Chikara.

“You’ve gone ... um ... white,” muttered the boy sitting opposite. “Oh, hell, I have got this so ...wrong, haven’t I? But I thought... I ... um ... I’ve _really_ misread things _. Shit_!”

Chikara tried to answer but his mouth was dry. He tried to smile, but his face had frozen. He tried to make sense of what was actually happening in that room, at that time, (with _this_ boy) but his thoughts had gone into freefall.

It was Akaashi Keiji holding his hand. Sitting on a futon in his bedroom, he’d reached across and taken Chikara’s hand in his.

And Chikara would have been lying if he said he hadn’t thought (obsessed) about a situation like this, for Keiji had snared him that first day at Training Camp. Caught by the other boy’s beauty (an odd word, one that shouldn’t be used for a boy, he’d thought at the time, but it was the only word that rang true) and his own obsession to capture images on film. His mind was trapped in a prison of light and shade, of contrasts and angles, and an aching need for something he knew he’d never have.

It would have burnt out – this compulsion, this need, this longing to document.

(Because that’s all it was. Through Chikara’s eyes, Akaashi Keiji had an interesting face, with carved planes and sculpted cheekbones. That. Was. _All_.)

And it would have done if he’d stayed on the sidelines, gone home and forgotten.

But at the barbecue, with all the rivalry gone, Keiji had approached _him_. He’d been the one stumbling over his words, but still persevering, as he’d engaged Chikara in conversation. They’d chatted. Realised a commonality not just based on volleyball, and decided to keep in touch, leaving Chikara in a daze that the impossible had happened.

It was a friendship primarily, quickly dropping surnames and honorifics, discovering that as well as books they shared a dry sort of humour, a wry way of seeing the world as they swapped sharp observations and joked about their respective days. It was only when he’d switched off his phone and powered down his laptop that Chikara had lain back on his bed and allowed himself a glimmer of a dream.

But that’s all it had ever been. A thought. A hope. A wish. A _helpless_ dream that started with handholding (What if our hands accidentally touched? Or what if we played each other, and when we shook hands he didn’t let go?) because handholding _could_ be innocent, even between two boys of seventeen.

But then, as he slept, the control function of daylight slipped, and other fantasies would intrude. A kiss, and another, and fingers in hair, and palms on skin, legs entangled, and waking up in a sweat because Keiji was his friend and he should not ... could not do ... or think or ... No... He’d crushed those thoughts because it was hopeless to even dream.

 

Except that Keiji was currently holding his hand, or ... no ... was he removing it? _Hell!_  

Tightening his fingers, Chikara at last found his voice (sort of). “N-no, you’re not wrong.”

From under heavy lids, Keiji’s eyes gleamed at him. The he swallowed, and the confidence Chikara thought his friend held in spades, dissipated.

“Uh...” he began, his fingers twisting around Chikara’s. “If I’m not wrong, then what do we ... um ... do now?”

“You’re asking me?”

Keiji screwed up his face, shutting his eyes, looking for all the world as if everything happening right at that time, in that room on the makeshift futon hurriedly set up for Chikara’s sudden visit, was causing him pain.

But his hand told a different story. Its contact with Chikara’s unwavering.  Slipping his fingers around the back of Chikara’s palm, he squeezed again. “I’ve not been in this situation much,” he mumbled, and squinted open one eye. “For ‘much’ read ‘never’.”

“Huh?” Chikara blinked, then shook away his confusion. “You mean with a boy, that’s um ... yeah, that’s cool. I mean, it’s not exactly a situation I find myself in that often, or kind of never, too, but I kind of think. I sort of, what I mean is. What I think, what is probably true is that it’s not really ... uh ...”  Jeez, he was babbling. Ennoshita Chikara, regular debater in class,  was coming out with the type of garbage Tanaka used when faced with Shimizu-san. More than that, he was pretty sure he was blushing and the saliva function in his mouth appeared to have gone into some kind of over production mode. He swallowed the vat of spit in his mouth, and peeked through his lashes at Keiji.  The only good thing was that he had now opened both his eyes and wasn’t looking quite so pained. More amused.

“Am I making any sense?” Chikara mumbled.

“Um ... no,” Keiji replied, and bit his upper lip. “Will it help if I look away?”

“Probably not.” Okay, deep breath, because at least Keiji hadn’t removed his hand, and was smiling, even if that was probably a response to Chikara’s achingly bad fluster of a speech. “I’ve not kissed a boy, before,” he said plaintively, and then he looked back into Keiji’s eyes. “It can’t be that different from kissing a girl, though, can it?”

Keiji held his gaze. There was a pause, an eon long second, before he replied with stolid certainty, “Chikara, I’ve not kissed a girl, either.”

‘Really?’ he wanted to say, but stopped himself because he was pretty sure he would have yelped the word so loud that Keiji’s mum would have burst into the room. “Oh,” he settled for. “What never?”

“Um, there was a girl when I was eight and I had to give her a kiss on the cheek because she’d come to my birthday party and bought me some crappy colouring book with unicorns in it.” A strange kind of giggle flipped through his lips. “S-sorry, you probably like unicorns, don’t you?”

“Not really thought about it,” Chikara muttered. “Uhm ... so ... Keij... are you saying you don’t want to kiss me. Is this –”

“I don’t know,” he interrupted, a wisp of a rasp to his voice. “Hmm... hmmm ... hmm .... it’s .... um ... you’renotaunicorn.”

“ _What_?”

“You.” Keiji breathed. “Are Not A Unicorn, Chikara.”

With his free hand, Chikara rubbed the top of his head. “Uh ... yeah, I know.”

“I like you.”

“Ah, good.”

Keiji squeezed his hand tighter. “And I do want to kiss you but I’m scared because:  ‘A’, I haven’t done this before with anyone at all except for the girl when I was eight.” He gasped breath.  “‘B’, you obviously know what you’re doing and I don’t want to disappoint you. ‘C’, what if I’m the only person in the world that thinks kissing’s repulsive? ‘D’, I can’t remember if I’ve cleaned my teeth. ‘E’-“

“Are you going to go through the alphabet?”

“Last one, I promise,” he whispered. “’E’, what happens with teeth and tongues? I don’t want to bite you. Or be bitten, come to think of it.”

As Keiji frowned in contemplation, pulling his brows down so far they almost eclipsed his eyes, Chikara laughed. He couldn’t help it. He didn’t want to laugh and knew it was the very last thing he should have done given Keiji’s incredibly out of character anxiety, but he couldn’t stop.

“Thanks!” Keiji snapped, and pulled away his hand.

“No! NO!” Chikara yelped (softly so Keiji’s Mum didn’t shoulder charge her way in). He grabbed Keiji’s hand with both of his. “Come back here. I’m sorry, it’s just ... I’ve never seen you on the back foot like this before. I always feel like I’m the one playing catch-up, you know.”

“Catch up?” Keiji queried. “Why would you think that?”

He laughed again, this time self-deprecatingly. “Keij, look at us. Look at you, then look at me. You’re ...” He paused, not wanting to say the word, but  what other word was there? Hot, didn’t cover it, trivialised it even, good-looking wasn’t enough and handsome wasn’t right. Because he wasn’t handsome. Keiji was ...“Beautiful,” he mumbled. “You must know that. We’re unequal.”

And now he closed his eyes, waiting for the ‘huh?’ or the ‘no, really?’ or ‘stop this, you’re making me sound like a girl!’ or ‘Chikara, have you taken something?’

“I have my mum’s cheekbones and eyes, and my dad’s chin and eyebrows. The hair is some kind of mixture between the two, and I’ve been told my nose is exactly like my granddad’s,” he said, matter-of-fact. Then he coughed. “I’ve not met your mum, but you’re very like your dad.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“It’s neither. I’m just stating a fact and ...” He tilted his head to one side. “How did we get into this conversation? Is it important right now?”

Backtracking, Chikara considered. “Um... I was making comparisons, but ... uh ... yeah, let’s not go there.” He cleared his throat. “Okay, so we’ve established that I’m not a unicorn, and that’s good because you’re scared of them-”

“Not scared! I just think dragons are better.”

“You should have explained, Akaashi-chan, because that makes so much more sense,” Chikara teased.

“Don’t take the piss or I’ll leave.”

“It’s your house, and ... um ... I’ve still got your hand.”

“Oh ... yeah.”

“So...” Licking his lips, then thinking better of it because what if that looked scary to someone who’d never kissed before (he was discounting the girl who liked unicorns because somehow he figured she wasn’t a rival) Chikara lifted his hands and Keiji’s towards him. Very slowly, and maintaining eye-contact, he kissed the top knuckle of Keiji’s third finger.

And as he did, some of the tension in Keiji’s face eased. His legs crooked and splayed in front of him, he shuffled closer, tilting his face down towards the hands between them.

Feeling Keiji press his lips to the back of his left hand, feeling those lips-warm, yet slightly rough – imprint themselves on his skin, Chikara let out the minutest of sighs and the knot of tension in his neck that he hadn’t even realised had bunched there, dissolved.

It was a short distance from hands to mouths. A something closer than hair’s breadth to twist towards each other. Still clasping his hand, Chikara pushed out his bottom lip (he didn’t want to catch Keiji with his teeth) and pouted.

Keiji’s lips were just as warm and slightly rough as they’d felt on his hand, but now there was a response, a hitch of breath, a flicker of eyelids and finally a vague smile, telling Chikara that Keiji wasn’t repulsed.

“How was that?”Chikara whispered, pulling away and resting his chin on their hands.

“Over too quickly,” Keiji grumbled.

“Oh, well that we can remedy.” Releasing Keiji’s hand, he bumped forwards, cupped his face, and grinned. “Ready for your second kiss?”

“Yeah,” he said, and smiled back. “Bring it on.”


End file.
